Bingo Brown and the Language of Love

by Betsy Byars

Bingo got out the salad. He had already cut up the lettuce and vegetables and had planned to toss it, cheflike, at the table as a diversion for his parents. Now he had to do it as a diversion for himself.

  “Can I tell you something?”

  Bingo said, “If you like,” but he did not let up on his tossing.

  “You are a wonderful cook,” Cici said.

  Lettuce fluttered nervously into the air and onto the counter as Bingo’s head snapped up in alarm. “No, I’m not. I promise I’m not!”

  He was only beginning to understand how important it was that this girl not like him. The thought surprised him. It had never even occurred to Bingo that the day would come when he would actually want to be disliked.

  And, furthermore, he didn’t want any big blonds to like him. He wanted them to avoid him, to cross the street when they saw him coming.

  It was strange how just one experience with a big blond could made a man yearn for a small brunette.

  “I’m very careless; I don’t measure stuff,” he blurted out, gathering up the stray salad and dropping it back in the bowl. “Half the time I don’t even wash my hands.”

  “Real chefs don’t either. I’ve watched them on TV. I wish you could see the way my mom fixes meals. She just, you know, covers everything with bean sprouts.”

  “Smells good!” Bingo’s mom called cheerfully from the front door.

  Bingo swirled, stricken.

  “Quick! Go out the back door. Give me the dog! Go on! Go!”

  “Why?”

  “It’s my mom!”

  “What does your mom have to do with it?”

  “Just go!”

  Bingo and Cici had a brief tug of war over Misty. Bingo won, but he staggered back and landed hard against the refrigerator door.

  Condiment bottles clinked inside. Liquids sloshed. Ice cubes rattled.

  “What on earth is going on back there?”

  Bingo’s mom started across the living room.

  “Nothing, Mom,” Bingo called. “Don’t come in. Please! I want supper to be a surpr—”

  He didn’t get to finish because his mom was already there. She stopped in the doorway, taking in the domestic scene. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the blond.

  Bingo put Misty on the floor. He smoothed down his apron modestly.

  His mom’s face tightened in a way Bingo had never cared for. “So! What is going on back here?”

  “She was just leaving,” Bingo stammered. “She was holding the dog so I could cook, and then I was trying to get the dog, and she was, well, she was just getting ready to leave, weren’t you?”

  “Mrs. Brown?” Cici said in a cool, woman-to-woman way.

  His mom responded with equal coolness. “Yes?”

  “My name is Cici, with two i’s, you know, and I probably ought to explain to you why I’m standing here in your kitchen.”

  “Probably.”

  Bingo said, “Just go home, please,” to Cici.

  He turned to his mother with bright desperation. “Mom, I made chicken in tarragon sauce, well, actually it’s oregano sauce because we didn’t have any tarragon, but since we didn’t have the tarragon, I won’t count this as one of my meals. I’ll just throw it in for—”

  His mom said, “Be quiet, Bingo. That can wait. Go on, Cici. I really would like to know what you’re doing in my kitchen, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, Mrs. Brown. You’re probably going to think this is silly, but I have this real good friend named Melissa. She moved to Bixby, Oklahoma, last spring. Did you know that?”

  “It’s come to my attention.”

  Bingo’s mom had gotten new clothes for her real estate career, and when she had them on, she acted—Bingo thought—very, very businesslike, too businesslike.

  “Well, Melissa wrote and asked me to take a picture of Bingo, and so I came over with my camera, and after I took his picture—actually, I took two pictures—no, three, but one was of my thumb.”

  She held up her thumb as if she were bumming a ride. “You know how sometimes you put your thumb on the lens when you’re nervous?” She flexed her thumb twice. “I wouldn’t have been so nervous if it hadn’t been for this nerd looking over the fence. So then …”

  Bingo closed his eyes as the miserable tale droned on. He leaned back and let the refrigerator keep him from falling to the floor.

  Mentally he began going over the multiple listings he would put under “Trials of Today,” starting with:

  1. A mixed-sex photography session.

  Under “Triumphs” he would once again have only the one word: none.

  The Pronoun Explosion

  BINGO LAY ON HIS Smurf sheets. Misty lay on her blanket beside Bingo’s bed. Misty was snoring softly. Bingo was awake.

  There was a knock at the window.

  “I’m not here,” Bingo called.

  “It’s me, Worm Brain.”

  “I know.”

  “And it’s important.”

  “Wentworth …” It was a plea.

  The knocks got louder. Slowly Bingo pulled himself up and went to the window.

  Wentworth said, “Hey, you know that blond girl that was taking your picture this afternoon, the one who sort of liked me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Cici.”

  “Cici.” Wentworth spoke it like an agreeable Spaniard. Then he said, “How come I never saw her before?”

  “She’s not in our grade.”

  “She’s older?”

  Bingo shook his head.

  “Younger?”

  Bingo nodded.

  “She can’t be younger. She’s built like a twin-engine—”

  “Good night.”

  Bingo didn’t wait to hear what twin-engine vehicle Cici was built like. He collapsed on his bed.

  “Knock, knock,” his mom said. “Can I come in?”

  “Apparently you already are,” Bingo said coolly.

  “Oh, Bingo, maybe I did misinterpret the scene in the kitchen this afternoon, but when I came in the front door I heard scuffling sounds in the kitchen, and then when I came into the kitchen, there you were with this—this woman!”

  Bingo maintained a dignified silence.

  “You were against the refrigerator, gasping for breath. Your face was red as a beet. Bingo, you did look guilty. And she was against the sink, also out of breath, also looking guilty. What was I supposed to think?”

  Bingo shrugged. “Nothing … anything.”

  For the first time in his life, Bingo was grateful for pronouns. Words that were used as substitutes were especially handy when you didn’t know exactly what words they were substituting for.

  “Let’s just forget it.”

  Bingo came up with, “Whatever.” It was a mark of how low his life had sunk, that the only thing he had to be grateful for were pronouns.

  “Thanks. Oh, Bingo, did I tell you I think I sold the Maynard’s house?” She left without waiting for an answer.

  Almost immediately there was another knock at the window. Before Bingo could answer it, there was a knock at the door. Bingo swung around helplessly.

  His dad stuck his head in Bingo’s room. “You got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “I just wanted to say that I—”

  Knock, knock.

  “Excuse me, Dad, I’ve got to answer the window.”

  “The window? People knock on your window?”

  “Just one.” Bingo crossed the room. Wentworth’s nose was pressed against the screen.

  “What do you want, Wentworth?”

  “I’m going on vacation in the morning,” Billy said.

  Bingo sighed. “I know that,” he said with what he thought was great patience. “I’m keeping your dog.”

  “Well, if that girl—the blond one that likes me—Cici? If she asks where I am—”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell her I’m on vacation.”
r />   “I will, Billy. Good night and good-bye.”

  Bingo came back to the bed. His dad was reclining against the Smurf pillows, his arms behind his head.

  “Does he do that often, Bingo?”

  “Often enough.”

  Bingo sat on the edge of the bed. “If it’s about this afternoon …”

  “Your mom may have overreacted on that, Bingo.”

  “May have? She thought this girl and I were—I don’t know exactly what she did think we were doing.” Bingo was genuinely offended. “Anyway I would never do stuff like that in a kitchen!”

  “Look, Bingo, your mom has always worried that you’d be, well, sort of shy with girls.”

  “Why would she think that? Were you?”

  “No, just the opposite.”

  “Then why should I be?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what she thought. Then all of a sudden, in the course of a week, she gets a fifty-dollar phone bill from your calls to one girl and then she catches you in the kitchen with another.”

  “So now she’s started worrying that I’m not shy enough.”

  His dad smiled. “Something like that.”

  “I didn’t even like that girl this afternoon. She’s not my type. But when I do like a girl, well, I really, really like her, Dad. I can’t help it.”

  “I couldn’t either.” His dad looked up at the ceiling. “Over the years there’ve been, let’s see, at least ten girls that I loved like that.”

  Bingo looked down at his hands in embarrassment. He wished his father would keep personal stuff like that personal.

  “The first was JoBeth Ames in kindergarten. I actually married her.”

  “Dad!”

  “Yes, her older sister performed the ceremony. In second grade it was Lisbeth; it was Monica in third; Hazelann in Junior High. Hazelann had a pink angora sweater that used to reach out when I got close to her. Like, I’d pass her in the hall, and this angora stuff would come at me, like I was a magnet. It wouldn’t do that for anybody else.”

  Bingo’s dad continued with his eyes closed. “I suppose it was something electrical between us, because the first time we dated, she got in the car and she had on the pink angora sweater and she slid across the seat—we sat close back then—and her hand touched mine, and a big blue spark flashed in the air.”

  Bingo waited as respectfully as he could, under the circumstances, for his father’s eyes to open.

  Finally they did and, to Bingo’s relief, his dad sat up. “It still happens to me every now and then, and I’m thirty-eight.”

  “What still happens? Blue sparks?”

  His father shook his head.

  Bingo tried not to show his alarm. “You fall in love?”

  “Well, I don’t guess you’d call it love, Bingo. Like last Saturday I went in Eckerd’s, and this woman was standing there spraying some sample perfume on the insides of her wrists. Then she touched her wrists together and lifted them to her face, and I fell in love right there in Cosmetics. Now don’t get me wrong, Bingo, I have never even thought about being unfaithful to your mom.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Then from Eckerd’s I went to Bi-Lo, and a woman in Produce asked me to help her pick out a good cantaloupe, and as we were—”

  “You fell in love in Bi-Lo, too?”

  Now Bingo’s voice was high with alarm. It was bad enough to hear of old loves, old wedding ceremonies, old blue sparks. Hearing of new stuff made Bingo want to put his fingers in his ears.

  His father broke off and said briskly, “Well, I’ve gotten off the subject. I didn’t come in to talk about my weaknesses.”

  Bingo took a deep breath to calm himself. He had always known his parents were blind to the depths of his own feelings. They had proved that again and again. But apparently he had been somewhat blind, too.

  As soon as he could speak normally, he said, “So what do you want to talk about?”

  “Well, just that despite the incident of the phone bill, Bingo, your mom and I have been very pleased with you this summer.”

  “You have?” Bingo felt they had managed to hide their pleasure rather successfully.

  “I myself have had the feeling that the three of us, well, this summer it’s been more like three adults living in the same house. It’s been actually peaceful. Then, when you started fixing supper, well, your mom was so happy. It was a thrill for her to come home to a good supper.”

  “I don’t know about good,” Bingo said. “She scraped every bit of oregano sauce off her chicken.”

  “She was upset.”

  “Well, I was, too, but I ate mine. Dad, I prepared that sauce under very difficult circumstances with a girl—only she’s more like a college girl, Dad—following me around. I need privacy to cook. I’m not the Galloping Gourmet.”

  “Your mom’s under a strain right now.”

  “What kind of strain?” Bingo paused. Had he been blind to his mother’s feelings, too? “I thought Mom loved her job. She never talks about anything else.”

  “She does love her job. If anything she loves it too much.”

  “She’s not going to get fired, is she?”

  “No, but …” His dad got up quickly. “Look, I better let you get some sleep. Good night, Bingo.”

  “I’d like to know what kind of strain,” Bingo began. “Wait a minute.”

  But his father was closing the door behind him. Suddenly Bingo was very tired. It had been a long, hard day. He would find out about his mother’s strain tomorrow.

  “Good night, Dad.”

  Bingo lay down on the Smurf sheets and closed his eyes. As he tried to sleep, burning questions trotted across his mind instead of sheep.

  When I am a father, will I fall in love in Eckerd’s and Bi-Lo?

  Can a gene for this kind of masculine weakness be passed on from father to son?

  Aren’t there some indications that the unfortunate gene has, indeed, been passed on?

  When I am thirty-eight, if someone asks me to help them pick a good cantaloupe, will I be able to do this without blushing or—worse! Worse! Will I actually hang out at the cantaloupe counter, hoping someone will ask? Finally, at last, Bingo slept.

  The Missing Vital Organ

  BINGO HAD A STRANGE, empty feeling.

  It wasn’t hunger. He ate and he still had it. It wasn’t thirst. He drank a lot of pop, too. Bingo didn’t know exactly what it was. It was just a huge internal void.

  It was as if some vital organ had been secretly removed from his body and beamed up to some alien. And now this alien was stretched out contentedly, saying, “Ah,” while on earth Bingo suffered in confusion.

  Perhaps, Bingo thought, he could use this empty feeling later in one of his science-fiction novels, but now he could only wait for it to pass.

  This was the third day of the emptiness. It had started that terrible afternoon when his mother had mistaken the incident in the kitchen for a romantic encounter. Ever since then, there had been this emptiness, which was not improving. If anything, he was getting more empty.

  Bingo got up from the sofa. He said, “Come on, Misty. Let’s go to the store.”

  At the sight of her leash, Misty began trembling with excitement.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m just going for some noodles and a can of tuna. Tonight I’m making tuna lasagna.”

  Bingo hooked the leash on Misty’s rhinestone collar. He was glad to have Misty these days. With this terrible three-day emptiness, he needed both companionship and eye contact. Misty’s eyes watered a lot, so it was especially satisfying to tell her his troubles.

  He and Misty were going down the steps when the mailman arrived. “I’ll take those,” Bingo said. He glanced down and stopped in place.

  The top letter had his name on it. Mr. Bingo Brown. He loved the way his name looked with a Mr. in front of it. A name like Bingo needed a Mr.

  He lifted the envelope and held it in his hand, as if weighing it. He smelled it for the scent of
gingersnaps, but the letter only smelled like U. S. mail.

  Bingo wondered if he would be able to control himself when Melissa started using perfume. If the scent of gingersnaps sometimes drove him mad, what would perfume—which was a chemical actually designed to drive men mad—do to him? Could he—

  Misty whined at the end of her leash.

  “In a minute, Misty.”

  He put the rest of the mail in the box and, slipping the end of the leash on his wrist like a bracelet, he opened his letter.

  Dear Bingo,

  I was really glad to get your letter, because after your phone calls stopped, I thought you had forgotten I was alive.

  I’ve seen my new school, but I know I’m not going to like it as much as Roosevelt Middle School. For one thing, you won’t be there.

  A girl in my apartment building says the science teacher is neat. As you know, I’m going to be a scientist and a rock star, so this is important to me.

  Bingo stopped for a moment, remembering the day Melissa had announced her dual careers to the class. “I am going to be a scientist and a rock star.” It had been like a movie he had seen recently, and he had fallen instantly in love with Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. He went back to the letter.

  I wrote Mr. Mark a letter, giving him my new address, but he hasn’t written back yet. I think of you a lot, Bingo. I hope sometime I’ll get back to see you, or maybe you could come out to Bixby for a visit. You ask your mom and I’ll ask mine.

  Love forever, Melissa

  P. S. I asked my best friend, Cici, to come over and take a picture of you. You probably don’t know Cici, but she knows you because I pointed you out to her in the hall one day. If you don’t want to have the picture taken, you don’t have to.

  Bingo stopped at the corner. While waiting for traffic, he put the letter in his pocket. Then he picked up Misty so they could cross the street. He had already learned that Misty was so afraid of cars she tried to run under them for safety. Above all, he did not want to have to say to Billy Wentworth, “Remember that dog I was keeping for you? Well, she got run over.”

  He put Misty down on the sidewalk, and they continued walking.

  Bingo said, “Misty, I could never go to Bixby. For one thing, my mom wouldn’t let me. And also, Misty, I don’t particularly want to go.